== How do I upgrade a RHEL/CentOS Mailman package from source. ==
Note: If you try this and have issues, follow-up on the mailman-users@python.org list [[https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-users.python.org/]].

[[https://wiki.list.org/DOC/RHEL%20file%20changes%20after%20version%202.1.5-20|Another article]] discusses !RedHat's changes to Mailman to make it conformant with FHS. It includes information about where various files have been relocated to and links to a `Mailman-Developers@python.org` post that discusses the motivations for this and contains a patch to implement the changes. Unfortunately, the patch is against a very old base, and detailed instructions are lacking. This article is an attempt to remedy that.

The RHEL patch, updated for MM 2.1.34+ is [[attachment:mailman-FHS.patch|here]].

To actually do the upgrade, several steps are required.
 1. Download and unpack the 2.1.34+ tarball into a directory, or get it with
 {{{
 bzr branch lp:mailman
 }}}
 1. Download the [[attachment:mailman-FHS.patch|patch|&do=get]].
 1. In the download directory, apply the patch with
 {{{
 patch -p0 </path/to/mailman-FHS.patch
 }}}
 1. Run `./configure`. At a minimum, this will require the following options for the FHS layout:
   . --with-pid-dir=/var/run/mailman/ 
   . --with-config-dir=/etc/mailman/
   . --with-lock-dir=/var/lock/mailman/
   . --with-queue-dir=/var/spool/mailman/
   . --with-log-dir=/var/log/mailman/
   . --prefix=/usr/lib/mailman/
   . --with-var-prefix=/var/lib/mailman/
 and these for compatibility with the RHEL package:
   . --with-username=mailman
   . --with-groupname=mailman
   . --with-cgi-gid=apache
   . --with-mail-gid=nobody
 Note: the RHEL/CentOS rpm configures with the following options:
  . --libdir=/usr/lib
  . --prefix=/usr/lib/mailman
  . --with-var-prefix=/var/lib/mailman
  . --with-config-dir=/etc/mailman
  . --with-lock-dir=/var/lock/mailman
  . --with-log-dir=/var/log/mailman
  . --with-pid-dir=/var/run/mailman
  . --with-queue-dir=/var/spool/mailman
  . --with-template-dir=/etc/mailman/templates
  . --with-python=/usr/bin/python2
  . --with-mail-gid="mail postfix mailman nobody daemon"
  . --with-cgi-id=apache
  . --with-cgi-gid=apache
  . --with-mailhost=localhost.localdomain
  . --with-urlhost=localhost.localdomain
  . --without-permcheck
 however, there are issues with some of these:
  1. --with-template-dir and --with-cgi-id are unrecognized without other !RedHat patches.
  1. --with-mail-gid requires another !RedHat patch to accept more than a
  single value, so set it appropriately for your MTA.
  1. I don't recommend --without-permcheck.
The above steps should configure Mailman so that `make` and `sudo make install` will install everything in the RHEL FHS locations. Be sure to run check_perms after installing to catch any permission issues.